The established mission of the Methodology Core for the UAB Multidisciplinary Clinical Research Center (MCRC) is to develop and provide state of the art methodology and methodological education in the collaborative support of clinical and translational research in arthritis and musculoskeletal disease (MSD) at the local, regional, national, and international level. Toward this goal, the Methodology Core will continue to provide the statistical, epidemiological, outcomes research, statistical genetics, economics/cost effectiveness, and bioinformatics leadership and expertise required to develop and perform cutting-edge clinical research in arthritis and MSD as it pursues four broad goals are to: I. Support the design, data collection, management, and analytic efforts of the MCRC projects. II. Nurture original research in methodology applicable to clinical research in arthritis and MSD. III. Develop new investigators in the area of arthritis and MSD research. IV. Provide methodology seminars, workshops, and mini-courses to introduce the newest methodological approaches to the MCRC research base.